Typical examples of products subjected to security restriction are regulatory controlled drugs, commonly also known as narcotics, in a system for storage and withdrawal of pharmaceutical products. These controlled substances are subjected to strict controls on their storage and withdrawal, which can be effected only by authorized persons under rigid procedural rules, authentication and prescriptions.
In the field of management systems for the automatic storage and retrieval of products, numerous automated stores operating with transfer devices of various types are in fact known. The principal functions which must be performed by such devices are those of receiving an order for the retrieval or the storage of one or more specific products, verifying and selecting the area of the store in which to deposit or retrieve said products, operating the necessary devices so that they move to the locations established according to a particular sequence, actuating the devices so as to withdraw or deposit every product listed in the order to be dealt with and, finally, actuating the devices so that they deposit the withdrawn products at the outlet of the store, or return to the entry of the store to take up a new group of products to be stored.
One of these system for automatic storage and withdrawal of products, particularly but not exclusively pharmaceutical products, is known from WO 03/043912 by the same Applicant, Swisslog Italia S.p.A., whose content is here acknowledged and incorporated by reference.
It is an aim of the present invention to improve the above-mentioned system so that it can accommodate the management of products subjected to security restrictions, such as, but not limited to, controlled substances in a pharmaceutical store.
It is another aim of the present invention to provide a system and a method for the automated delivery of products comprising products subjected to security restrictions, which makes it possible to optimize and speed up the operations of storage and retrieval of these products.
A further aim of the present invention is that of producing a store system which is simple, economic and capable of managing large quantities of objects, without jeopardizing the security measures necessary for the secure storage and delivery of products subjected to security restrictions.